Saturday, July 21, 2012

R & R

Spending a little quality time with friends at Surfside Beach...south of Myrtle Beach, SC for about a week. After this little get away, I will have two weeks left before starting back to school. Hard to believe that it is already time to start back to school - must mean that I've had a busy summer.

I plan to work on interactive notebook ideas for language arts and science when I get back from the beach. That is, between workshops for school and for the college where I work part-time. Any ideas or links that anyone would like to share, please feel free - I'm sure that I am not the only one who would love to know about any ISN ideas, activities, or lessons out there for language arts and science.

Enjoy your last few weeks of summer!

Really? I am so much on vacation that I don't even know where I am...Surfside Beach is in SC...not NC. But right now, I am too lazy to fix it!

I do an interactive reading and note taking strategy with my students. It really helps break complex information and vocabulary down for students and makes some of my higher students take time out to really think about the concepts. I teach Language Arts and science and feel it is important to reinforce the LA strategies in science as well. First we use a spiral so that nothing falls out. On the notes page, we underline important phrases and write synonyms for any complex words. We highlight essential vocabulary and draw an arrow over to any context clues as to its meaning. We glue notes on the left page and then break those notes down on the right page with sketches, clip art, pop ups, and foldables or lift up flaps. We make sure nothing important is left off the right side page. I have found that my lower kids often use this right side as a study guide. The pages that follow in that unit are review sheets, digital camera photos from a project or lab we did...anything to jog their memory of the content. At the start of class each day, I call out a page number and the students pair up for review of previous material. One person looks at the notes page, and the other tells everything they know about it by looking at their book at only the extra pages. This way the notes person is rereading the content to be sure nothing is left out and the other is using all his or her resources to review. They have no clue they are bringing their LA brain to science class!

Randy, I teach 8th English in Oklahoma. I would LOVE to have a copy of your Interactive Language Arts notebook. You completely inspired me last year, and I became obsessed with the spiral, lol! Is this something you have available, or would be interested in selling? Thank you! SYorman